Bazaarmodel Chapter 1 [Draft -- version 0.10]

“Laws are a necessity. Laws are made by the strongest, and they must and shall be obeyed.” -- Brooks Adams.

Bazaar management and bazaar organization isn’t something new. It is as old as the road to Rome. Knowledge has always been gratis. It is in recent years that knowledge must me some kind of material product ‘protected’ by copyright and patent laws, making it some kind of possession thereby introducing artificial scarcity. Patents are expensive to acquire and more so when leasing them. Our whole culture is based upon copying, like acquiring a language but this ‘right’ is ripping the ability to copy apart, especially by trying to privatize every element of live itself, from genes to language like songs.

Civilization is based upon copying. Some examples:

There was one person in history who forcefully copied everything he could lay his hands on. His name was Demetrios of Phaleron and he lay the knowledge ground work for the Library of Alexandria. Under his guidance every paper and scrolls were being copied. Not one ship left the harbor until it was turned inside out in the search of new scrolls. The originals were kept in the library, a copy was given to the former owner.

The Chinese weren’t menacing the Europeans with copyright or patent laws to hinder their pursuit of Chinese discoveries and knowledge like gunpowder, the printing press, clocks and maps of the world oceans and continents used by many Europeans like Columbus. The Europeans nor the Chinese were getting poorer from it. It steadily increased the wealth in Europe thereby recovering from the destruction of the Great Library of Alexandria.

In late 17th early 18th century the young United States of America would utilize industrial espionage to gain new industrial and scientific insight of the British Empire for their fledging industry. All this gathering of knowledge paved the way for the advanced computing machines in 1910 used by the US Navy for their battleships. The computer held the canons steady on target by compensating the ships roll. They surpassed the British with this feat of technology.

Around 1910 China order two locomotives from Germany. Germany reveled the order from China and expected many more from a country with hundreds of millions inhabitants. They surely needed a lot of locomotives for transportation. To their surprise their were no follow-up orders from the Chinese. So the Germens send a few diplomats to China to investigate what could be the cause if this conundrum.

The German diplomats were stunned when they arrived in China. Their were dozens of locomotives traversing the vast land which looked like Germen ones. When the Germens asked why this was so the Chinese host amiably explained what they had done. The first ordered German loc remained in tact while the second one was diligently dismantled. All parts were carefully examined and copied.

The German diplomats grumbled that this wasn’t the intention trade itself, they should order more from the Germans. The Chinese silenced them with the remark: “And when will you pay for all those copied clocks?”

In the 1950ties and 60ties the Japanese were rebuilding their economy by imposing lose patent laws and circumventing international patent laws, copying vast scientific and technological know-how from the United States and improving it. Japan is now (2005) the second most technologically powerful economy in the world after the US and third largest economy in the world after the US and China and the Chinese are using the same loose patent tactics to gain knowledge.

Unhindered knowledge is a very powerful resource for attaining a higher level of civilization. It is in abundance not scarce as matter. If, as we have seen in the past, knowledge is such a contributor for wealth creation, than why not build a model on top of it? So that knowledge is the prime resource instead of matter.

The bazaarmodel would fit the template of such a new kind of model and this book will lay the theoretical framework and how it works in practice. The bazaarmodel is different than the today’s cathedral model (world). It doesn’t rely on artificial scarcity, power, ‘protection’ and boundaries but on abundance, influence, freedom and openness.